Headlines

A nationwide strike froze public-transport services, shrank hospital staffs and kept many public offices shut across Portugal on Thursday amid a growing consensus among workers and businesses that austerity has reached its limit, The Wall Street Journal reported. Protests and strikes have become common since Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho's government took over in mid-2011 to implement measures to control the country's spiraling deficit under a €78 billion ($101.49 billion) bailout from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

The board of Seat Pagine Gialle approved on Thursday a debt restructuring proposal and new strategic guidelines to relaunch the Italian yellow pages publisher, Reuters reported. In February, the heavily indebted company said it would ask creditors for a debt restructuring after conceding its interest burden and the recession had made its targets to 2015 unachievable. In a statement, Seat said the debt proposal, which will be presented for review to a court in Turin, envisages that a portion of its debt will be converted into equity and part of it reimbursed with cash.

Rona Inc, Canada's biggest home-improvement retailer and distributor, will close stores, cut jobs and reduce costs in the second phase of a restructuring plan designed to return it to profitability, the company said on Thursday. Rona said it plans to close 11 unprofitable stores; reduce administrative, marketing, merchandising and distribution costs; and cut a further 125 administrative jobs.

European Union finance ministers sought Wednesday to agree on rules for dealing with failing banks amid divisions over when governments should be allowed to bail them out, The Wall Street Journal reported. The new rules are supposed to put an end to expensive taxpayer-funded bailouts, which have pushed several European governments to the brink of bankruptcy, and instead place the burden on a bank's investors and creditors.

Argentina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower-court ruling against it in a case over the nation’s defaulted debt, Bloomberg reported. The South American nation claims a federal appeals court in New York was wrong when it ruled in October that investors in restructured Argentine debt can’t be paid unless holders of the nation’s defaulted bonds, led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and its NML Capital Ltd. unit, are also paid.

The U.K. government on Wednesday renewed its commitment to austerity by setting out plans for another round of deep spending cuts that will begin in April 2015—a month before the next general election is likely to take place, The Wall Street Journal reported. The wisdom of cutting budget deficits at a time of slow economic growth has been questioned by a growing number of economists, the International Monetary Fund and other international bodies.

The shareholders of Spanish plastics bottle maker La Seda de Barcelona on Wednesday rejected a debt refinancing plan that would have allowed the company to withdraw from insolvency proceedings, its largest shareholder said, Reuters reported. The Catalonia-based company, which makes bottles in Europe, Turkey and North Africa, has been in talks with creditors for months since high material costs and excess supply of the PET plastic containers it makes put pressure on its business.

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta unveiled a package of measures aimed at bringing down Italy's spiraling youth unemployment—among the highest in Europe—fulfilling one of the signature promises of his shaky government, The Wall Street Journal reported. With the measures introduced on Wednesday, Mr. Letta hopes to persuade the European Union at a summit this week to grant Italy new tools that could help it boost growth and employment. The stakes are high, with pressure building on Mr.

Creditors of Apex Minerals have finally called time on Ed Eshuys' attempt to revive the struggling gold producer, with receivers appointed to the company overnight, The West Australian reported. A last ditch attempt to borrow more money to keep the company afloat appears to have failed, with one of the company's major secured creditor - RF Capital, the family company of Multiplex heir Andrew Roberts - last night appointing Pitcher Partners as administrators and Ferrier Hodgson as receivers.

It is official: the Chinese central bank does not want to trigger its own credit crisis, the Financial Times reported. After two weeks of starving the financial system of cash and telling banks to clean up their own mess, the People’s Bank of China struck a much more emollient tone on Tuesday. In a volte-face that bore more than a passing resemblance to Mario Draghi’s “unlimited” bond-buying pledge last year at the European Central Bank, the Chinese central bank promised to provide liquidity support to any financial institution strapped for cash.